MAN AND ENVIRONMENT

Conflicts between man and his environment have increased considerably both in frequency and intensity in the last years. The two prominent s cientists, Teilhard de Chardin and V. I. Vernadskij have seen the only chance for saving mankind in the evolution of noosphere, the sphere o f reason. When confronting this aim with present results of man's acti vities in biosphere - e.g. the glasshouse effect, destruction of ozono sphere, presence of pesticides everywhere etc., this theory seems to b e very risky. An other theory of this kind is that of Gaia by Lovelock . It assumes a high autoregulation capacity of the biosphere. The ques tion, however, remains as to the limits of this capacity towards the m ankind activity. It is stressed by environmentalists nowadays that the recent anthropocentric philosophy should be abandoned and we should p ass to a biocentric one. It seems very reasonable even if it is hardly possible to apply it in every day life in detail. In order to underst and the interrelations between man and his environment better, we shou ld take in account their development in the past. There are many notio ns and theories concerning the cours of the hominization process, the ecological aspects, however, have not been respected in them sufficien tly. One of the basic principles of ecology shows that no organism can exist without its environment, the evolution of both having passed ne cessarily in close interconnection (cf. e.g. Novak, V. 1989). Most org anisms are more or less passive towards their environment, their tende ncy being rather to adapt themselves to their life conditions than to change them. It is only the man who has commenced to adapt various obj ects of his environment like stones, bones, twigs etc. and change them into tools for his protection against wild beasts and for various wor king needs. It has been shown by Chiarelli (1987) that young mice deve lop a bigger brain when raised in optimum conditions in comparison wit h mice in less suitable conditions. Similarly man, when adapting his e nvironment for his benefit, has created better conditions for his prog eny and thus contributed to the improvement of its central nervous sys tem. Man with improved brain could better use his intelect in improvin g his tools and his environment. So originated a typical positive feed back between man and his environment. The evolution of the modem man w as accelerated especially by the neolithic agrarian revolution. Storin g crops and raising cattle prevented hunger in bad seasons so that chi ldren were not limited regularly in their physical and mental developm ent. Man's evolution was so accelerated that there was not sufficient time for natural selection and genetic fixing of the acquired abilitie s. Our children start their life as animals and the last stage of thei r development into human beings depends on their family and society. T heir education consists in the recapitulation of the evolution from th e quadruped to the erect bipedal locomotion, the development of the ar ticulate speach etc. which took thousends years in the past is absolve d in a few years in the ontogeny. The unfortunate ''wolf children'', w hose early development took place in a wolf's den could never be adapt ed to human way of life. So the interrelations between man, his enviro nment and human society have been and are far more important than it w as hitherto supposed.